Evidence of Evolution
By Michael Windelspecht | Evolution from macro to micro - and everything in between!
700,000-Year-Old Stone Tools Point to Mysterious Human Relative
Someone butchered a rhinoceros in the Philippines hundreds of thousands of years before modern humans arrived—but who?<p>Stone tools found in the Philippines predate the arrival of modern humans to the islands by roughly 600,000 years—but researchers aren’t sure who made them.<p>The eye-popping …
ArchaeologyRavens Are Evolving, and Not in the Way You'd Expect
Instead of branching into new species, raven groups experienced something called "speciation reversal."<p>A new study shows that the common raven is anything but commonplace in its evolution.<p>Using DNA samples taken from ravens for nearly twenty years, the study provides evidence that common ravens on …
BirdsHumans Were Not Smarter Than Neanderthals, We Simply Outlasted Them
Their fate could have been ours.<p>By the standards of the Paleolithic age, members of <i>Homo neanderthalensis</i> were the height of sophistication.<p>These …
HumanitySex, disease, and extinction: what ancient DNA tells us about humans and Neanderthals
Three new studies uncover details about the sex lives of human ancestors, and the DNA modern humans inherited<p>Two new genetic analyses help explain the unexpected roles Neanderthals play in modern human life — influencing everything from hair color to mental health. The new research also adds to …
HumanityAncient Viruses Are Buried in Your DNA
In July, scientists reported that a strange protein courses through the veins of pregnant women. No one is sure what it’s there for.<p>What makes this protein, called Hemo, so unusual is that it’s not made by the mother. Instead, it is made in her fetus and in the placenta, by a gene that originally …
BiologyHow Do Darwin's Finches Change Their Beak Sizes So Quickly?
Epigenetics may be how Darwin’s finches rapidly change their beak size and shape in response to sudden environmental changes, such as drought or human disturbance, in the absence of gene mutations<p>Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one …
BiologyYes, humans are still evolving. Here's how you can tell.
Even more evidence that we’re continuing to change.<p>The nice thing about bacteria is that they multiply really fast. This is inconvenient if they happen to infect, but useful if you want to see how evolution works. Put antibiotics on a Petri dish with enough bacteria, and a few days later you’ll …
BiologyAesthetic Evolution In The Animal World
At the heart of Richard O. Prum's new book <i>The Evolution of Beauty: How Darwin's Forgotten Theory of Mate Choice Shapes the Animal World — and Us</i> is a bold idea:<p>"... that animals are not merely subject to the extrinsic forces of ecological competition, predation, climate, geography, and so on that …
Andy WarholEarly humans and Neanderthals interbred much earlier than once thought
It’s a sex-laced mystery. If modern humans didn’t reach Europe until about 60,000 years ago, how has DNA from them turned up in a Neanderthal fossil in Germany from 124,000 years ago?<p>The answer seems to be that there was a previous migration of early humans — more than 219,000 years ago.<p>The …
EvolutionIn Neanderthal DNA, Signs of a Mysterious Human Migration
With fossils and DNA, scientists are piecing together a picture of humanity’s beginnings, an origin story with more twists than anything you would find at the movie theater.<p>The expert consensus now is that Homo sapiens evolved at least 300,000 years ago in Africa. Only much later — roughly 70,000 …
Mitochondrial DNAAncient humans may have been mothers to some Neanderthals earlier than we thought
The latest discovery adds another clue to the mystery of human and Neanderthal evolution<p>An early wave of modern human ancestors interbred with Neanderthals between 470,000 and 220,000 years ago, a new DNA discovery from an ancient Neanderthal thigh bone suggests. That’s <i>much</i> earlier than experts had …
The Mystery of Homo naledi Ricochet Science
A new human species possessing traits of both ancient hominids and modern humans has been found to have lived far more recently than scientists …
The Evolution of the Superbugs Ricochet Science
In August 2016, a woman in her late 20s arrived in a hospital in Reno, Nevada, carrying a particularly deadly strain of the bacteria <i>Klebsiella</i> …
MicrobiologyHumans Are Driving a New Burst of Evolution - Including Possibly Our Own
We're changing ourselves.<p>The unprecedented impact that humans are having on the planet is well known to us all. Scarcely a day passes by without a …
EvolutionFossil of pregnant sea creature changes understanding of how reproductive system evolved
Fish-eating reptile Dinocephalosaurus, which lived about 245m years ago, gave birth to live babies rather than laying eggs<p>An extraordinary fossil unearthed in southwestern China shows a pregnant long-necked marine reptile that lived millions of years before the dinosaurs with its developing embryo, …
DinosaursFinding the Speed of Evolution in a Study of Bird Beaks
When the ancestors of Darwin’s finches arrived on the Galápagos two million years ago, they gained access to a world of new morsels, untapped by other animals. In a relatively short period, 14 species of finches evolved, specializing in different diets through different beak shapes: short for …
PaleontologyEarly Meteorite Bits Reveal Clues About Solar System's Evolution
Many meteorites found on Earth are remnants of one titanic solar-system collision that took place more than 460 million years ago. But for the first …
MeteoritesScientists Just Announced Our Best Shot at Ending Antibiotic Resistance to Date
A molecule that reverses antibiotic resistance.<p>Scientists have developed a molecule that reverses antibiotic resistance in multiple strains of …
What These 3.66 Million-Year-Old Footprints Tell Us About Our Human Ancestors
Newly discovered footprints of five human ancestors that roamed the Earth 3.66 million years ago suggest that members of the <i>Australopithecus …
Proteins Solve a Hominin Puzzle
<b>Around 40,000 years ago</b>, modern humans made their way into Europe, sweeping through the continent and, eventually, driving to extinction our close …
Our First Date Out of Africa?
When researchers looked at the genome of a Neanderthal from Siberia, they saw DNA that did not belong.<p>“No matter how we tried to fix it, it didn’t go …
Caesarean births 'affecting human evolution'
<b>The regular use of Caesarean sections is having an impact on human evolution, say scientists.</b><p>More mothers now need surgery to deliver a baby due to their narrow pelvis size, according to a study.<p>Researchers estimate cases where the baby cannot fit down the birth canal have increased from 30 in …
Why Very Smart People Are Happiest Alone
In a just-published study about how our ancestral needs impact our modern feelings, researchers uncovered something that will surprise few among the …
PsychologyA Groundbreaking 30-Year Old Evolutionary Experiment Is Still Going Strong
Early in his career, the decorated biologist Richard Lenski thought he might be forced to evolve. After his postdoctoral research grant was canceled, …
Ebola Evolved Into Deadlier Enemy During the African Epidemic
The Ebola epidemic that tore through West Africa in 2014 claimed 11,310 lives, far more than any previous outbreak. A combination of factors contributed to its savagery, among them a mobile population, crumbling public health systems, official neglect and hazardous burial practices.<p>But new research …
DiseaseCultivated Carp 'Reverse Evolve,' Grow Scales Back
Undoing hundreds of years of work by hungry monks<p>The dense protective layer of scales covering the body of the common carp makes the fish a pain to eat. But centuries ago, clever European monks managed to breed this quality out, creating a cultivated variety with few to no scales. They called it …
Mysterious Branch of Humanity Possibly Discovered
A group of humans migrating out of Africa some 40,000 to 70,000 years ago mingled with an as-yet unknown branch of humanity, researchers say.<p>Modern …
AnthropologyGonorrhea Is Becoming Untreatable, U.N. Health Officials Warn
We are running out of ways to treat gonorrhea, the World Health Organization announced today.<p>The U.N. health agency released new guidelines warning doctors that it no longer recommends an entire class of antibiotics, quinolones, because quinolone-resistant strains of the disease have emerged all …
Public HealthWhat do aliens look like? The clue is in evolution
Speculating about what aliens look like has kept children, film producers and scientists amused for decades. If they exist, will extra terrestrials …
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